How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
When [Lonnie] thought of home these days, it felt as if he'd been cast out, and yet he knew it hadn't really been like that. Pop might have thrown him out of his house, but Mum hadn't chucked him out of theirs. It had been his own choice to go; he'd wanted space from them. (8.3)
There's a lot in this book about young people needing "space" from their families, but who among us can't relate to that one? Maybe this is one of the things that bonds Lonnie and Clara together: They both find each other while on journeys to discover who they are without their parents.
Quote #5
[Lily] went into her mother's room and took the old shoe box from the top shelf of the wardrobe. A shoe box! Proper families kept their photographs in albums, labeled with names and dates and places. (10.19)
Actually, Lily, a lot of people probably keep their family pictures in shoeboxes. Again, Lily has a somewhat idealized notion of what a family is and fails to see that when it comes down to it, her situation isn't all that unique.
Quote #6
Freakish, thought Lily. That was the word that best described their family. Not freaks, exactly, but getting there. They were a family that somehow didn't fit—at least not into the orderly suburb where they lived, a neighborhood in which any human problem was tidied out of sight. (13.11)
Here's a weird thought: Lily is essentially judging the other families in her community by what their houses look like. Yet she's very quick to call Pop out for making judgments about others based on race. Isn't that kind of hypocritical? Whether you think the situations are comparable or not, she's definitely not seeing the whole picture of these people's lives.